Politicians Find Mandela Magnetic

It's hard to put a political price tag on a picture of a local politician standing next to South African legend Nelson Mandela. But it is very, very high.

So when Mandela, the president of the African National Congress, came to Chicago's City Hall, the nerve center of Chicago politics, Tuesday, the jockeying was as intense as any seen at the traditional front line of the city's annual St. Patrick's Day parade.

Amid heavy security, Mandela's greeters and well-wishers at City Hall were grouped by prestige, but even those with clout jostled their neighbors to get next to him.

Mayor Richard Daley, a group of several of the city's 50 aldermen, U.S. Congressmen Bobby Rush and Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) and Rev. Jesse Jackson were at Midway Airport to greet Mandela, who arrived from a similar fundraising sweep in Philadelphia.

Left behind at City Hall were politicians of lesser rank and clout who sat at tables in the lobby outside Daley's 5th-floor City Hall office, sipping coffee and orange juice served by tuxedoed waiters, waiting for the Mandela entourage to arrive.

In the 1st-floor lobby, payrollers and the general public waiting to buy city vehicle stickers or pay water bills mingled together.

Veteran City Hall observers noted that the crowds in the lobby far exceeded those drawn by then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton last year, but weren't as large as those that gathered when Frank Sinatra came to visit Mayor Richard J. Daley in the early 1970s.

Upon arrival, Mandela was quickly rushed by elevator to the 5th floor, huddled briefly with Daley in his private office and then emerged in the lobby, where he was taken to a small podium to stand next to the mayor.

Then the jockeying began in earnest.

Jackson, although not one of the welcoming speakers, stuck close to Mandela's side. Illinois Senate Minority Leader Emil Jones (D-Chicago), blending into the crowd behind the South African leader, suddenly gained a foot or so in height when he managed to get himself onto the podium.

The effort to catch some of Mandela's reflected glory took a different form at a Palmer House Hilton luncheon sponsored by Daley and Chicago church leaders.

A raft of church officials gave speeches introducing Mandela that together occupied more than two hours.

The church officials characterized Mandela in glowing terms: "A light from God to speak to the principles of freedom," said Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam; "The moral leader of the world today," pronounced Jesse Jackson.

Tuesday evening at Operation PUSH headquarters, 930 E. 50th St., those who got to see Mandela were partly early birds who arrived hours in advance, and partly the strong who did not wither despite the sweltering temperature inside the building.

Mandela's speech at PUSH started at 5 p.m., two hours late. Four hours earlier, about a thousand people had crammed into the building, which seats only 600. The Fire Department refused to allow more inside.

Just before Mandela spoke, in shirt sleeves, about 150 people, including children, fled the building, apparently overcome by the heat inside.

Mandela later attended a reception in the air-conditioned Winter Garden Room at the Harold Washington Library. There, Mayor Daley presented Mandela with a Chicago Bulls jacket and hat.